French Gardening and Its Master 



of course, that there was no important gardening in France 

 before or after his day, or by other men during the period of 

 his own activity. The gentle art was indeed practiced with 

 keenest deHght, and with signal success, by countless genera- 

 tions of Frenchmen before the man I have named began his 

 career ; and to so great a degree is this true, that the French 

 may fairly be called a nation of garden builders. There has 



always, from the 



*% 



V e r }' earliest 

 times, been, in the 

 French character, 

 a special fondness 

 and aptitude for 

 the art of horticul- 

 ture ; and from 

 the earliest times 

 there have been 

 striking examples 

 of gardens whose 

 design has been 

 developed in obe- 

 dience to the laws 

 not merely of an 

 art, — that is to 

 say, a science, — 

 but of a fine art, 

 strictly so-called. 

 No medieval 

 stronghold or re- 

 ligious establish- 

 ment was com- 

 plete without its 

 space (however 

 small) set apart 

 for the special purpose of a garden — a pleasure-ground 

 where flowers and fruit-trees were disposed in such forms 

 and in such combijiations as to give not only a practical 

 result as a matter of agriculture, but a grateful effect from 

 the point of view of pure beauty. The French seem always 

 to have felt an instinctive delight in the simple pleasures 

 of the o])en air: in flowers and trees, and vistas, and run- 



PLAN OF THE GARDENS OF VERSAILLES 



98 



